Google Launches Identity Verification Badge Scheme 241
theodp writes "CNET reports that rather than backing down after complaints about its insistence that Google+ user accounts be opened under a real name, Google has upped the ante and will pin 'verification badges' on users in an effort to assure people that 'the person you're adding to a circle is really who they claim to be.' In a Friday night post, Google employee Wen-Ai Yu explained that the Google+ team is initially 'focused on verifying public figures, celebrities, and people who have been added to a large number of Circles, but we're working on expanding this to more folks.'"
Maybe this _is_ them backing down (Score:5, Insightful)
If, at the same time, they limit or stop disabling accounts that don't use a real name. Having a verification badge as "proof of real name" while allowing the use of unverified, pseudonymous identities (without the badge) is a perfectly fine idea.
Of course, if they're going to keep up the nonsense of entirely forbidding pseudonymous accounts, this means nothing.
who do they think they are? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I demand the right to determine... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hm.
Ah, a "ME" generation kid (Score:2, Insightful)
Note how John Allsup turns someone saying something into a right without question or debate.
Google is not your personal slave John, they are a company that offers a service under certain terms. As long as those terms do not violate the laws of a country, they are free to have whatever terms they wish. What next, you are going to complain to Ubuntu for forcing you to use a password? Restricting your "identity" to a very narrow range of characters and character length? Do you think every website out there should allow the creation of an account with random squigles for the artist formerly known as prince?
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Personally I think I can see where Google is trying to go with this. If you ever hosted a public forum you know just how bad a problem assholes are. Slashdot knows, remember the GNAA? There is a LOT of work going on behind the scenes to make sure that the posts you read are at least somewhat genuine, not just 100% pure trolls or advertising. That is reserved for certain editors posts.
If people were known by their real identity then suddenly one part of the greater internet fuckwad theory falls away. Suddenly everyone can see just what a pimple on the ass of humanity you really are when you troll a forum.
And it is nothing new. The best game servers are closed, only allowing access to people you really know. There are countless of closed websites where you have to have some kind of proof you really belong to that group before you can start taking part. The reason is simple, they want to know who you are so that you will behave.
That is all google wants I think. To create a social network that is not rampant with spam and scams. Where people can open a mail without having to a forensic analysis to determine if it isn't some nigerian in financial trouble.
Note that when email spam is being discussed plenty of people here suggest schemes to identify people who post in one way or another more accurately.
LinkedIn offers a social network where by its nature most people will use their real identity and gosh it is easy to spot spammers because they don't have an idenity. Guess Google wants more of that then Facebook and its deluge of crap.
And if you don't like it? Don't use it. So far I only seen people against it who want a company to produce a service they want custom made for them and damn the need for a business case. Go run your own social network without any need to identify at all. Happy spam cleaning.
I am interested to see where this goes. No, I don't use Google+ but then I don't use Facebook. Slashdot is good enough for me for all the in depth human interaction I need... it hasn't got any you say? Exactly how I like it. If you want google+ to be facebook, stay on facebook.
In the NOT so distant future.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Privacy vs Transparency (Score:5, Insightful)
"whether or not we like it,"
That's just the thing. We DO like it. Well, I don't, maybe you don't either, but in the aggregate we the public LOVE giving up our privacy and anonymity. We do it voluntarily, in exchange for things we could have gotten without giving it up.
I've been on the internet a long time. Since the early 80's. I've watched people by the hundreds of millions chose the paths that allow for more monitoring, less privacy, and so forth, time after time after time.
We GAVE the authorities and the data mining private companies this control. I'm willing to PGP my mail to anyone. I don't use facebook, I block their "like" buttons, I block google's tracking crap, I encrypt my IM conversations with friends. But do other people? Generally no. The internet has turned into a place that allows a scale of monitoring and behavioral profiling that exceeds anything George Orwell could have imagined. It didn't have to be this way. It's this way because we don't care.
It's a fight I fought for many years, trying to convince people to value their privacy. I lost.
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm getting to the point where I no longer like Google, nor it's products. Verify this, Google+ that, really now.
Agreed, but isn't this better than what they were doing?
Before they would ban everyone they thought was fake. Now it appears they'll let you be fake, but you get a extra "This is a REAL Person!" badge if they verify you.
This is a GOOD thing. So now you can have your fake and anonymous profiles for those that are worried what they say on the internet will get back to their job [google.com], and you can have your "real name" accounts for family and friends.
Really they should have been doing this since the beginning but better late than never, and this is the first feature they've added that has not been a direct copy from Facebook since Facebook still bans people that they think are fake even though they're real [cnn.com].
Good job Google+, I might switch to you yet.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ah, a "ME" generation kid (Score:5, Insightful)
Google's right to set the terms under which it provides its services is not in dispute, but the fact that Google has the right to do what it's doing doesn't mean its actions are therefore beyond legitimate criticism. In a world increasingly dominated by corporate interests, having corporations behave in a manner consistent with the ideals of a free society is far better than the alternative.
Re:Privacy vs Transparency (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize that information is a double edged sword? Those same insurance companies that may cut you a break will also charge you a premium based on such info as well. If a bank knows you've been visiting loan sites to much, or checking bankruptcy sites, you credit worthiness could be damaged.
If the information they collect is beneficial, it is still YOURS, and you should be the one in control of it's release. This should not be a tacit agreement, or a one answer gives full access situation, but rather you should have granular access over what is and is not released. Unfortunately every inch you give is almost impossible to claim back later on.
I would say you are misguided to think that data mining is in any way beneficial to you personally or to society in general. It gives corporations an unfair advantage in pricing (for instance they can leverage markets based on local wage values, forcing up the cost to what the local neighborhood will bare rather than a fair price), All data mining does is to put a dollar sign new to your personal info, but that value isn't valuable to you, but rather to those who sell it to the highest bidders.
Re: Baaaaa (Score:5, Insightful)
Do I remember the GNAA? Sure I do. I read slashdot at -1 at all times, simply because the moderation here is unbelievably wrongheaded. So I see every troll post. And they don't bother me one bit -- I would much rather see what an Anonymous Coward has to say than subject myself to Slashdot's rather pitiful offering of preemptively devaluing the anonymous remarks. Quite often, the anonymous remarks contain more valuable content than the "highly rated" remarks. Part of that is that moderation here is so badly broken, but part of it stems directly from the fact that as an anonymous speaker, people do indeed have wider latitude in what they can say. I'm not only interested in the things we're allowed, or supposed, to say. I want to hear what people think as they actually choose to express it in the most unfettered manner possible. GNAA? That stuff is utterly pitiful, and takes just about zero effort to recognize and skip over. An anonymous post containing material unsanctioned at the source from someone in Washington, from within congress (yeah, we have posts like that here), or Iraq, or Google, for that matter... now *that's* something I'm interested in reading. And those posts would not exist in the same form if they were signed by Real Name.
The thing about slashdot is that although the corporate culture leans strongly towards the muzzling of the anonymous, it does NOT enforce this -- it leaves that up to the individual user. So I see everyone. Others choose, that is CHOOSE, to stick with the results of moderation and the default low ranking of anonymous posts.
Google's corporate culture path here is, apparently, not going to allow the users any choice about how they manage their circles. It would be as simple as Slashdot's "browse at -1" option; "only let people into my particular circle(s) if they have the "real name" thing in their profile, and then allow individual lockouts on top of that. Control it at circle granularity, and it's workable. I could have circles that were unrepressed, and others could bask in the knowledge that so-and-so is using their "Real Name."
But Google, as you point out, isn't in this for the users. That whole "do no evil" thing? Utter nonsense. As these policies show, when it comes to a choice between money and not doing people harm, money wins. And that *is* a choice they can make. And we can just look at "do no evil" as just another marketing slogan. Which I guess is exactly what it is.
The one thing consumers -- which is what we are with relation to Google -- have as our little bit of leverage is that we can vote with our value to the company; That's why you won't find me on Google+ (or Facebook.) I've never opted into either one. I always found Facebook's TOS to be odious (yeah, I actually read site TOS declarations) and Google's whole "we must know who everyone is" simply makes me want to be somewhere else where I can interact with the people they leave out.
When you opt into this real name thing, you're leaving behind those who have been stalked, those who are political rebels or pariahs,
those who the state (or the feds) have declared outcasts, those on "lists", justifiably or not, people in countries where free speech is a free ticket to a machete party... me, I have no interest in this sanitized "we know who you are" world. That's a very bad, even immoral, choice for me. But I won't say you're bad because you want to go there. I'll just view it as a place containing the people I *don't* need to be listening to. The sheep. The ones who all say the same thing, think the same thing, and are happy to have the ostracized folks living under bridges -- and would just as soon forget they exist.
I lean strongly libertarian; I think Google should be able to do what they want. But when they do things I consider odious, then *I* get to do what I want, too, and that is to not engage the company in what I consider to be less than good practices. Google+ is odious, as I presently understand it. As long as that is the case, "teh social" is "teh worthless."
We're past 1984? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can make some good comparisons here, no doubt, but it's pure idiocy to say we've gone past 1984.
And yes, I read the book. Four times. I'm not saying that make me an expert; I'm just staving off the inevitable question.
Guard Your Innards (Score:4, Insightful)
In the words of my ex (and also by use of, extending the amount of information you can track down about me) "Guard your innards!"
I've been lurking on this interwebs thing since the very late 80s, and I rarely leave a trail wider than I intended. Everything I do and say is effectively done through an alias, and I have one of those for each way I want to be perceived.
e.g. My most open information is tied to one of two IDs, "blackhawk-666" (and variants), and "ivan.hawkes@gmail.com", and yet a google of either will bring you up 54 pages or 397 pages - mostly programming related information. Anything you find on these two searches is likely to be true, and that includes my address, which lately I've not been so concerned about hiding. You ruffling through any mail I was too careless to shred, soak and then burn on an open fire is not my concern.
I hold other aliases which I use for when I don't want to be associated with the main branch of information kruft I leave in my wake. These are usually provided for me by hotmail aliases or one of about 50 user account variants ("Passwords are hard!").
I don't encrypt my conversations or go to great lengths to try and hide because I prefer to hide in plain sight...rig
Re:We're past 1984? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah...nice try with the Orwell hyperbole, but until we're voluntarily installing always-on public webcams in our homes and sending our parents to reeducation camps underneath the Department of Justice building I think we're a little short.
I know what you mean, but think about what they have instead. With the Orwell version, someone had to constantly monitor those screens and listen-in on people. Today, a computer program can scan conversations everywhere automatically because those conversations are already transcribed into text. There could be a program scanning Slashdot right now looking for keywords. In some ways, a telescreen is more acceptable because then someone had to decide they had a reason to monitor someone, then assign someone the full-time 24-hour-a-day job of doing it.
And yes, I read the book. Four times
That's a good example. Somewhere, somehow, a computer can now figure that out. But to determine that via a telescreen would require someone to spend years reviewing tapes, tracking your every move.
Re: Baaaaa (Score:4, Insightful)
This needs to be said over and over:
As bad as the name idea was in the US, Canada and Europe, it's an absolute disaster for some other countries.
Some people can create engaging content that many people want to interact with, but would in this country put their job or reputation at stake.
Some people can create engaging content that many people want to interact with, but in some countries will get them killed.
Please explain to me why a women's rights advocate in Saudi Arabia should have to give up her privacy to a state which considers her activity to be treasonous.
Please explain to me why a political dissident in a dictatorship should have to give up their privacy to a state which is known to imprison people for publicly advocating incorrect political ideologies.
Please explain to me why someone who disagrees with the anti-public-domain intellectual property dogma of the US and other countries should have to risk his freedom in order to discuss ways to subvert that system.
Please explain to me why I cannot decide who I, as a person, am, and what my "real" identity is. I'm much better qualified to do this than you are, Google.